In the book Calculating God, a character notes that this is a common civilization-wide choice. Living in virtual reality, rather than trying to expand into the vast expanses of space, is a common trope as much as it's a logical choice. It neatly explains the Fermi Paradox. In some fiction, like The Matrix, the choice might be forced due to cultural shifts, but the outcome is the same. A relatively sterile low-energy state civilization doing pure processing.
True. But it's not a binary choice. All it takes is to make one sub-optmial choice for the universe to be filled up with von-neuman probes in all star systems
> In North America there is an animal which is not a moose, but which are "for their unusual largeness improperly termed Elks by ignorant people"!
I'd say at this point in time the word "elk" in English means elk, not moose, at least in North American English. The article you linked to is in fact an article about the North American species of animal called elk, or Cervus canadensis. The quotation you cite is from 1672.
